Art Metropole

#15379

Where Grape Leaves Grow

Date

2023

Publisher

Self-Published

Format

Artists' Books

Genre

Literary, Narrative, History

Where Grape Leaves Grow is a story about immigration and loss told through poetic dialogue, presented within an expressive artist’s book. The book is a collaboration with designers Michelle Kuan and Emi Takahashi.

“If I told the story of my life exactly, some might say that it’s a story about loss. Loss of loved ones. Loss of culture. Loss of tradition. This book is not a story of loss, but a balm to heal the wound left by it.

In the second decade of my life, I lost my tayta, then my mom, and finally, my baba. Their memories were my window into Lebanon, their homeland and mine. Losing them meant losing a deep connection to our ancestry and culture. For years after their deaths, I lived behind a dark curtain, in the shadow of shame and ignorance, yearning for the opportunity I had wasted to know them. What I wanted to know more than anything was this: Who were they? Who am I?

At the same time I decided to find the answers to those two questions, I began writing this book. Where Grape Leaves Grow is the answer I thought I would never have. In this book is the story of my mom, tayta and baba’s lives, as well as a retrospective of nearly two millennia of Lebanese Maronite history—the history of my ancestors.

With the support of CUE grants funding, I was able to partner with designers Michelle Kuan and Emi Takahashi, who helped make _Where Grape Leaves Grow _ what it is today: A highly intimate and expressive artist’s book, inspired by warak enab, Lebanese stuffed grape leaves. Both designers share the second-generation immigrant experience, and understand the challenge of reconnecting to one’s culture, distant as it may feel from the diaspora.” –Anna Daliza